One food ingredient, our worst enemy

But the reality is we love our worst enemy. Not only we love, but we savor and have it every now and then and especially on every occasion and during every festival.

If we love our worst human enemy like the way we love this food enemy, our life would change and world peace can be achieved.

GranulatedWhiteSugar (Including Sweeteners) is the worst enemy of our good health.

“It (Sugar) should be the first item to be banned from your diet.” Nature Care by INYS

Added sugars contain a plenty of calories with NO essential nutrients. For this reason, they are called “empty” calories. There are no proteins, essential fats, vitamins or minerals in sugar… just pure energy, i.e. Calories.

Before sugar enters the bloodstream from the digestive tract, it is broken down into two simple sugars… glucose and fructose.

The fructose can only be metabolized by the liver. If we eat a little bit (such as from fruit) or we just finished an exercise session the fructose will be turned into glycogen and stored in the liver until we need it.

However, if the liver is full of glycogen (which usually is), eating a lot of fructose overloads the liver, forcing it to turn the fructose into fat.

When repeatedly eating large amounts of sugar, this process can lead to fatty liver and all sorts of serious problems.

However, it is not possible overeating fructose by eating fruit.

Hara-kiri by Sugar in our body:

Eating sugar gives our brain a huge surge of a feel-good chemical called dopamine, and we become addicted.

Eating lots of sweets have been shown to worsen joint pain because of the inflammation they cause in the body.

The side effect of inflammation is, it may make our skin age faster..

More and more consumption of added sugar may cause your liver to become resistant to insulin, an important hormone that helps turn sugar in your bloodstream into energy. This means your body isn’t able to control your blood sugar levels, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

When we eat excess sugar, the extra insulin in our bloodstream can affect our arteries, part of our body’s circulatory system. It causes stress to our heart and damages it gradually. This can lead to heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes.

For a diabetic patient, too much sugar can lead to kidney damage. The kidneys play an important role in filtering our blood sugar. Once blood sugar levels reach a certain amount, the kidneys start to let excess sugar into our urine. If left uncontrolled, diabetes can damage the kidneys, which prevents them from doing their job in filtering out waste in your blood. This can also lead to kidney failure.

Sugar may impact the chain of events needed for an erection. “One common side effect of chronically high levels of sugar in the bloodstream is that it can make men impotent,” explains Brunilda Nazario, MD, WebMD’s associate medical editor. This is because it affects your circulatory system, which controls the blood flow throughout your body and needs to be working properly to get and keep an erection.

Many studies have examined the link between sugar consumption and obesity and found a strong statistical association. The link is especially strong in children, where each daily serving of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with a whopping 60% increased risk of obesity.

One of the most important things you can do if you need to lose weight is to significantly cut back on sugar consumption.

A sugar-laden diet may raise your risk of dying of heart disease, even if you aren’t overweight. So says a major study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

According to USDA data, people who consume the most sugar have the lowest intakes of essential nutrients––especially vitamin A, vitamin C, folate, vitamin B-12, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, and iron. Ironically, those who consume the most sugar are children and teenagers, the individuals who need these nutrients most.

A major source of Sugar in the food we eat:

Sugar-sweetened beverages such as aerated drinks, sodas, energy drinks, and sports drinks are the biggest sources of added sugar. Other important sources include cookies, cakes, pastries, and similar treats; fruit drinks; ice cream, frozen yogurt and the like; candy; and ready-to-eat cereals.

As mentioned in the book: Reversing Heart Disease by Dr. Dean Ornish.

“The problem with sugar is it is often found in the company of fat: cakes, sweets etc.” Excess of fat brings additional health issues.

Healthy Sugar Substitute:

Indians are a fan of homemade sweets made of ghee, jaggery, and milk. Jaggery is the healthy sugar substitute. Jaggery contains antioxidants and minerals like zinc and selenium, which help prevent free-radicals responsible for early aging. According to Ayurveda, it has rich iron content and good for anemic people. Jaggery also acts as a cleansing agent of the respiratory tract and the digestive tract due to which it is good for people having asthma, acidity, cold, cough, and chest congestion. Drinking milk mixed with jaggery helps in blood purification, healthy hair, improves digestion, reduces joint pain and, makes skin smooth and healthy.

However, everything in moderation is good. Do not over eat sweet made of jaggery !!

Listen (Must) to Rajiv Dixit on Sugar (link given below). Though this talk is about Diabetes, he is covering Sugar after 5 minutes till the end of the talk. (in Hindi).